Last night, after midnight, as I said earlier, I was still up praying and
listening to tapes and trying to find the answer I needed to continue in the
ministry.  Nothing was working.  Not even my prayers of threatening and
complaints to God.  He's not afraid of me or you so He understands
regardless of how you pray even out of total frustration.  Anyhow, I flip
the radio on for the 100th time, it seemed like, tuned all the Christian
stations, and found nothing.  This time, however, I flipped the radio on and
the first sentence I heard was a man saying, God has not called us to
successfulness, just to faithfulness.  He wasn't even preaching.  He was
just responding to something his guest had just said which I hadn't heard.
My mind sprang back nearly 5 years ago when I was sitting in a man's office
for my first prayer session.  The anxiety and panic attacks had commandeered
my days and the demonic voices in my thoughts kept me awake, at first, for 4
nights and five days trying to get me to kill myself, renounce God, and a
whole lot of other things.  When I did drift off to sleep, they awakened me
by shouting so loudly in my head, I would literally almost jump out of bed.
The nightmares were worse.  As I sat there in this office, I knew God
wouldn't do anything.  The man asked me what I was feeling at that very
moment.  I said, "I feel like a failure."  He prayed.  I heard the Lord's
voice clearly say, "I never asked you to be successful."  I was stunned.
What?  I thought even being in the ministry was all about successfulness.
Right?  I've never tried from that day until now to be successful so that
one phrase in the middle of the night, confirmed Jesus was still around and
hadn't forgotten who I was.

Phil.